First Canadian vaccine approved for COVID

Covifenz, by Quebec-based Medicago, uses plant-derived virus particles that mimic the coronavirus’s spike protein.

thestar.com
Ghada Alsharif
Feb. 25, 2022

The first Canadian COVID-19 vaccine, Covifenz, was approved for use by Health Canada on Thursday.

The homegrown shot, developed by Quebec-based company Medicago, is also hailed by Health Canada as the first COVID vaccine that uses a plant-based protein technology: plant-derived, virus-like particles that mimic the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19 without containing any of its genetic material.

Regulators announced the vaccine would be authorized for adults age 18 to 64, administered in two doses of 3.75 micrograms, 21 days apart.

Clinical trials, which involved 30,000 participants, found Medicago’s Covifenz to be 71 per cent effective against symptomatic COVID infection and 100 per cent effective against severe disease, according to the biopharmaceutical company.

“The virus-like particles are grown in plants that are similar to tobacco plants, which can produce large amounts of the virus particles in a short period of time,” Dr. Supriya Sharma, chief medical adviser at Health Canada, said in a virtual press conference Thursday. “Once these particles are injected into the body, they trigger the immune system to produce antibodies against the virus.”

The vaccine also contains a pandemic adjuvant from British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to help boost immune response.

“It’s great that we developed our own capacity to develop vaccines inside Canada,” said Mina Tadrous, assistant professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. “I think we’ve seen throughout the pandemic that having both the capacity to produce and develop new therapeutics and vaccines is essential.

“Supply chains are global so the more and more that we can have built-in components of that supply chain in Canada, it makes us less vulnerable,” Tadrous said.

However, clinical trials for the plant-based jab began well before the Omicron wave hit Canada in December, raising concerns of the vaccine’s efficacy against the highly transmissible variant.

“We will generate Omicron-specific vaccine efficacy data soon, and in parallel we’re also collecting immunogenicity data, antibody response from our vaccine against Omicron,” said Marc-André D’Aoust, executive vice-president of innovation, development and medical affairs at Medicago.

D’Aoust said that Medicago also plans to test the shot as a booster.

Medicago’s jab is the sixth COVID vaccine authorized by Health Canada, following the approval of the protein-subunit shot from Novavax last week. Other approved vaccines include mRNA shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and the viral-vector vaccines from Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

It would likely be May or June before the Medicago vaccine is available in Ontario, said Dr. Kieran Moore, the province’s chief medical officer of health.

More than 88 per cent of the eligible population in Canada has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, according to Health Canada. As of Feb. 13, 84 per cent are fully vaccinated and 44 per cent have received a booster shot.

Medicago, which has an agreement to supply up to 76 million vaccine doses to the Canadian government, said it was committed to supplying the vaccine as soon as possible, in a statement Thursday.

“The product is late to the game but having another therapeutic option that might work a little differently will give patients more options, which is a good thing,” Tadrous said. “We still don’t know how this thing is going to play out.”